down his hoe, but through the battered straw hat that bobbed up
and down on the boy's head, one lock tossed on like a jetblack
plume until he reached the end of his straggling row of corn.
There he straightened up and brushed his earth-stained fingers
across a dullred splotch on one cheek of his sullen set face. His
heavy lashes lifted and he looked long at the woman on the porch--
looked without anger now and with a new decision in his steady
eyes. He was getting a little too big to be struck by a woman,
even if she were his own mother, and nothing like that must happen
again.

A woodpecker was impudently tapping the top of a dead burnt tree
near by, and the boy started to reach for a stone, but turned
instead and went doggedly to work on the next row, which took him
to the lower corner of the garden fence, where the ground was
black and rich. There, as he sank his hoe with the last stroke
around the last hill of corn, a fat fishing-worm wriggled under
his very eyes, and the growing man lapsed swiftly into the boy
again. He gave another quick dig, the earth gave up two more
squirming treasures, and with a joyful gasp he stood straight
again--his eyes roving as though to search all creation for help
against the temptation that now was his. His mother had her face
uplifted toward the top of the spur; and following her gaze, he
saw a tall mountaineer slouching down the path. Quickly he
crouched behind the fence, and the aged look came back into his
face. He did not approve of that man coming over there so often,
kinsman though he was, and through the palings he saw his mother's
face drop quickly and her hands moving uneasily in her lap. And
when the mountaineer sat down on the porch and took off his hat to
wipe his forehead, he noticed that his mother had on a newly